Page 13

12

Fane

Before

“I can’t believe you’ve never played cards. Everyone plays cards,” Cali said. Her bottom lip jutted out, and her eyes went round with concern.

I just watched her. Enchanted.

“Go Fish?” she asked, eyes both wide with disbelief and utterly horrified behind the dainty gold rim of her glasses. I had to press my lips together to stop the laughter.

“No.” I shook my head.

“Fane, this is awful. I feel like you missed out on something important here. Something, I don’t know, integral to every childhood.”

Cali knew all about my upbringing. We’d talked about it more since that first night in my truck. More than I thought I’d ever talk about that time in my life, and not in a way that made it hurt more. We talked about it in a way that made it hurt less.

Made it lighter somehow.

Sometimes, the conversations were serious. Words we exchanged in the darkness of my bedroom where we’d hand over one another’s stories. Where she’d tell me about how her dad used to push her on the swings as a kid, and that was when she learned all her multiplication.

And I would tell her about the time my dad hit my mom so hard I had sat in the corner of our living room for two hours, my eyes unblinking while I stared at her, terrified that she’d never wake up.

She never gave me pity when my past was so completely the opposite of hers. She just held me closer. Made sure I knew that even if I couldn’t see her, she was right there with me in the dark.

When she shared her stories, it wasn’t like she was only relaying them, but like she was giving them to me. Freely, with no strings attached. Letting them become mine as much as they were hers. Stories that gave me something I never had—a past that didn’t hurt to remember.

Other times, these were the sorts of conversations we had.

“Are you laughing at me?” Her hand flew up to her chest. “These are serious questions!”

“No, ma’am.” I kept my expression as subdued as possible. “Very serious.”

“What about Shithead?”

“There’s a card game called Shithead?”

“Bullshit?”

“What do you mean? You’re the one that just said it?”

Cali’s face was blank for a split second before she threw her head back, and body-shaking laughter erupted from her. Long black hair was splayed over the armrest of the chair she had draped herself over across from where I sat on the couch.

There was something about the way laughter looked on her that made her infinitely sexier. Cali didn’t laugh politely. She didn’t tame it down or try to change the way it sounded for anyone’s benefit.

Her laughter was loud. It took over every part of her.

Her face, her body, her hands.

She balled them into fists, and her toes curled in while she clutched at her stomach. It wasn’t just something that she did, it was something that actively happened to her.

“Fane! ” she wheezed my name a second before she landed on the floor with an unceremonious thump, her glasses falling off the moment she hit the ground. That just made her laugh even more. “ I’m going to pee my pants !” she yelled, voice muffled from the way her face was pushed into the carpet.

The huge, stupid-looking grin on my own face was only something I became aware of after it had already happened.

That’s what it was like to be around Calista Grey.

It was to suddenly be aware of the fact that you were happy for the first time in your life and have no recollection of when the process had even started, only that it had. That little by little, she’d taken the parts of you that were bruised and broken and helped you heal and put yourself back together with gentle hands and wide-trusting eyes.

“I can’t believe you’ve never played any of these card games. They’re life staples,” she said, still giggling. “I know!” She pushed herself up from where she’d been pancaked on the floor. “We’ll have a card game night! Ash can invite what’s-her-face, and Abbey can come too!”

And just like that, she’d started to heal another part of me without even trying.

“What’s that look mean?” she asked, the smile on her face so damn beautiful. She’d recovered, sitting back on her knees with her feet tucked under her. All she wore was one of my shirts, leaving her bronzed legs on full display. The waist-length waves of her hair were mussed and wild like they carried the chaos of everything she made me feel.

“What look?”

She pointed at my face. “That one.”

I dragged my eyes back up to meet hers. “Just thinking.”

“Oh yeah?” She stood, crossing the small space between us to settle on my lap. Her thighs slid around me, warm and familiar, her chest pressed to mine. “Care to share?”

My hands found her back, palms trailing upward, reveling in how every inch of her fit so perfectly against me.

“I was thinking about how I read somewhere,” I murmured, my thumb brushing over the soft curve of her cheek, “How you can tell when you’re in love.”

Her breath hitched, her body stilling in my arms like she was bracing for the weight of my words. Her eyes widened, shining like I was handing her the answer to a question she’d been too scared to ask.

“They say,” I went on, watching her pulse flutter on the side of her neck. It was wild, frantic, the opposite of my own steady beat. Because for the second time in my life, I was absolutely sure of what I was about to do. Second only to the moment I stood up from the bar where I sat with Ash, walked over to the beautiful girl with long black hair and asked her to dance. “You just know when you know,” I said, my voice quieter now, like it was something sacred. Something only for her. I leaned in, close enough to feel the warmth of her breath against my skin. Close enough to let her see how deep it went, how unshakable it was. “And I know.”

Her breathing hitched again. “You do?”

“I do.”

“You’re sure?”

She pulled a laugh from me, soft and unrestrained and only in existence because of her. How she didn’t already know that she was everything I’d ever wanted and needed and dreamed of was still beyond me.

“I’m sure, baby.”

“Okay, good.” She looked down, her fingers fiddling with the hem of my shirt before she looked back up, letting me get lost in those eyes that looked more honey in the golden glow of the light pouring through the window of my living room. “Because me too. I know too.”

I kissed her. I’d been kissing her for the last eight months, and it hadn’t been enough.

“I love you,” I whispered against her lips, wanting the words to embed themselves there, to find their home there, so that there wouldn’t be a day in her life she didn’t know what she was to me. Who she was to me.

“I love you,” she said back, eyes holding that determined, steely glint they did when she was on a mission. When she needed to do something, and no one was going to stand in her way.

Both her hands settled on the sides of my face. “I am so in love with you, Fane Mackenzie. Do you hear me?”

I did. I heard her, and all I could do was pull her back to me. To kiss her again. Taste her again.

Cali’s arms went up, and I pulled the shirt up and over her head. A routine we’d practiced over and over. I could predict everything down to the second.

The blush that bloomed on her chest and moved up her neck, turning the apples of her cheeks the most delicious shade of peach when it mixed with the honey tones of her skin. How her dusky nipples tightened into peaks, making my mouth water. The way her breathing hitched the moment I closed my mouth around one. The shiver that racked her body when I used my teeth, biting hard enough to sting.

I knew that it drove her crazy because, every time, without fail, she started to circle her hips. Grinding herself against the hard length of my cock until I slowly started to lose my mind.

“Rose,” I gritted out. Pulling back to watch the way her hips moved over me.

“I want—” she started but cut herself off. Sometimes, she surprised me and said exactly what she wanted. What she wanted to do to me. What she wanted me to do to her.

“What, baby?” I was literally panting at the sight of her, still watching the way she moved and doing my fucking hardest not to blow in my pants. “Tell me.”

“I want you inside of me.” Her voice was a hushed whisper, a tangle of nerves. Just hearing them come out of her mouth caused an involuntary thrust of my hips.

“ Fucking Christ. ” It came out a choked sort of cry. She was in control, and I fucking loved it.

“ Fane .” She moaned my name like it was the most delicious thing in the world. Cali stilled her hips, and a grunt of frustration tore from my chest. My eyes shot up to hers, and I could see the way her chest was heaving just as fast as mine. “I want to fuck you.”

Her eyes were hooded. Molten pools of all of my dirtiest fantasies wound into one single look, and she didn’t take them off me for a second. Not when her hand dipped below the waistband of my sweatpants and she wrapped her slender fingers around my cock, pulling me out and running the swollen head along the seam of her pussy.

It might’ve been the most erotic fucking thing I’d ever seen in my life.

Holding her panties to the side, Cali fed my cock inside of her. Eyes closed and head tipped back, taking every single inch of me so slowly that all I could do was grip her hips. I knew that my hold on her was probably too hard, that she’d have shadows of my fingerprints dotting the skin of one of my favorite parts of her body, but the thought of there being evidence of this long after it was over only made it better.

Made me need her more.

“Holy…holy fucking shit.” I was breathless, my eyes looking from where I was still slowly disappearing inside of her. Cali had leaned back, and it gave me the perfect view of her pussy. Flushed and pink and swollen with her arousal glistening over both of us. “Shit, fuck, you have no idea…Cali, you’re going to make me come.”

“Not yet.” Cali’s voice glided over every nerve in my body, and if she thought that her request not to come was going to do anything but make the tightening at the base of my spine worse, she was dead wrong.

“Are you okay?” I grunted, knowing she always needed a second to adjust.

In answer, she rose onto her knees and plunged down on me in one fluid motion, making me cry out.

Making her cry out.

My grip on her tightened further, and my eyes rolled back. She did it over and over, her nails digging into the muscles on my chest, my shoulders, my back. Over and over again, she took every inch of me into her, like if I didn’t reach as deep inside of her as I could, then we’d both fucking die.

“ Calista. ” Her name was a mindless growl. She was going to kill me. I was going to die the happiest man who ever lived.

“Not. Yet.” She punctuated each word with the rise and fall of her body, leaving me staring at the way I disappeared inside her tight, wet heat. At how wet she was, how it coated the inside of her thighs. How it made me want to pull her off me just so I could drag my tongue over her perfect cunt and taste her while she fell apart.

“You always feel so good. So. Fucking . Good,” she moaned, and I pulled her back to me, taking one of her full, heavy breasts in one hand and grazing her other nipple with my teeth.

“Are you going to come for me, baby?” I rasped against her skin, pulling my hand from where it had been locked onto her hip and swiping my thumb over her swollen clit. Dipping down to gather her arousal before moving it back up.

“Am I going to feel the way you fall apart just for me? The way your cunt grips me? Greedy and perfect and so fucking wet.”

Cali’s nails dug in harder, and I didn’t even know what the fuck I was saying, only that seeing her come apart— feeling her come apart—seemed like the only reason I was put on this earth. To make her feel like this .

“Do you know how wet you are, my love? The mess you’ve made?” I bit and nipped my way up to her neck, sucking hard and reveling in the way she whimpered. How I knew how close she was to coming completely undone.

I pulled her flush to me, both arms wrapping behind her. One hand gripping her shoulder, the other sinking in the hair at the nape of her neck, wrapping the strands around my fingers and pulling tight, exposing her neck to me. Trailing my teeth up the curve of her throat, I left tender kisses where I could see her pulse fluttering, a shiver racking my body at the sounds that she was making.

“Pl-plea,” she stuttered.

“Yes?” I murmured, still dragging my mouth against her skin, tasting her. Cali’s control came to an absolute end when she let me wrap my arms around her, and I knew the slow and measured thrusts of my hips were driving her insane.

“ Please, ” she whimpered.

“Please what, baby?”

“I—” A half-frustrated mewl, half-pleading cry tumbled out of her, and I knew she could feel my smile grow from where my face was tucked into the crook of her neck before I moved my mouth to the shell of her ear.

“Tell me you want to come on my cock, Calista,” I breathed. “Tell me that this is my pussy, and you want me to spill myself so deep inside it you’ll be feeling me for fucking days.”

“ Jesus, ” she sobbed. “I—”

I stopped thrusting completely, and a growl ripped from her throat. The grip I had on her was absolute, and the only movement she could make was the rise and fall of her chest.

I ran the tip of my tongue along the shell of her ear and felt her shiver.

“I—” She tried again. “I want to come…on your cock. I—”

“Tell me, baby.” I started to thrust again, slowly, just the way I knew she loved. “Whose pussy is this?”

“Yours,” she moaned. “I want to feel you come inside me, Fane. Please— ”

That was about all the willpower I had.

I pulled her down onto me, hard and fast. My hips pistoning into her with a ferocity that emptied every thought from my head but one. To feel her clench around me, to hear her call my name, to bring us both to the very edge of sanity that the thought of going over didn’t seem like such a bad thing.

Cali came so violently that she went limp in my arms, my name nothing more than a raspy moan trickling from her mouth in slurred sounds, and with a final thrust, I emptied myself inside of her, my hands still locked around her. Unwilling and unable to let her go.

We stayed like that for a long time, until the sweat on our skin cooled and our breathing returned to normal.

“Mmm.” Cali’s small and gentle hum made me open my eyes. She was already looking at me, one hand over my heart.

“What?” I reached out to tuck one of her unruly strands of hair behind her ear.

“Feel,” she murmured, pulling one of my own hands from where it sat on her waist and placing it over her heart. “We’re in sync.”

It took me a second to figure out what she was saying, but then the steady thrum of her heart pounded beneath my palm, and I got it. Our hearts were beating at the same time.

“You know,” she said, a small smile playing at the corner of her mouth. “They say that when your heart starts to beat in sync with someone else’s, it will stay that way forever.”

“Forever?”

“Mmm,” she hummed again before settling into my chest and tucking her head into the side of my neck.

“What did I do to deserve you?” I whispered. It was the same question I asked myself every single day.

“Everything,” she whispered back, and even though I didn’t believe her, I made a vow that I’d do everything I could to make damn sure one day I did.